Red December

The news is alight again with stories of Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his remarks concerning the holocaust and Israel. CNN.com reports, “Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of 6 million Jews in World War II as a ‘myth’ and calling for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map,’ launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.” They seemingly synonymously claim that Amadinejad has denied the Holocaust. The sad and irony of the above statements and the article of which it is a part is that ANY critically thinking person who turns his or her analytical mind on it can see the true holocaust myth and a part of its insidious purpose manifested before them. As is commonly stated in mainstream Holocaust literature, approximately 12 million humans beings were killed as a result of the NAZI Holocaust (I shall use a capital H to differentiate the NAZI holocaust from that of the Native Americans.) Of these approximately six million were ethnically Jewish. Wikipedia.org, whose article on the subject factually deviates from sources I’ve read concerning the genocidal intentions of the Germans on the Eastern front, nonetheless presents a quantitative list of some of the Holocaust victims that generally fits with what I’ve learned in history classes and read on my own:

About 6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews

• 1.8 –1.9 million non-Jewish Poles (includes all those killed in executions or those that died in prisons, labor, and concentration camps, as well as civilians killed in the 1939 invasion and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising)
• 200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti (Gypsies)
• 200,000–300,000 people with disabilities
• 80,000–200,000 Freemasons
• 100,000 communists
• 10,000–25,000 homosexual men
• 2,500-5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses

From: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust)

So, this begs the questions: why is it that when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is accused of calling the Holocaust a myth, that this should be synonymous with him denying the death of six million Jews. Why, by my math, if he denied the “Holocaust” then he denied the death of at least 12 million humans. Of course, this number leaves out the deaths of 20-30 million Soviet citizens (a larger number of whom died in German concentration camps than Jews) who perished due to both the war and intentional genocide on behalf of the Germans.

Now the reason I personally find the idea of Holocaust denial so offensive is that it denies the wrongful death, torture, and general suffering of all the above victims and a lot more. These people deserve to be remembered because they were human beings, and all of them are entitled to as much compassion as we can muster. We must remember them because we know that they all had worth and dignity and because we have duty to respect the sacredness of all life. And finally we must remember because if we let the real tragedy of the Holocaust and all the NAZI crimes really sink down into the depths of our souls, then maybe we won’t be as likely to tolerate future injustices.

When CNN and other mainstream media outlets, along with a large number of societal institutions in the West perpetuate and condone the idea that the Holocaust and NAZI atrocities in general were almost exclusively directed against the Jews they commit the very sin that they accuse Ahmadinejad of, and, worse yet, it appears that they commit this sin quite intentionally.

Intentional?

I do not claim to know how, in the field of public perception, the victimhood of the Holocaust and Hitler’s madness came to be laid so greatly on the heads of the Jews. The Cold War and many traditional prejudices in America against other groups must have been a major factor. Perhaps the Jewish plight was simply better conveyed anecdotally to the American people because Jews are better represented in America than groups such as the Roma. It is entirely possible that this idea was popularized completely unintentionally.

However, the severe politicization of the Holocaust to this day strongly supports the idea that this myth is intentionally propagated. For example, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, on one occasion, denied the holocaust of Native Americans by incorrectly stating that there were more of them today than when Europeans first landed in the Americas. Despite having made these statements, there were little to no waves made in the press about it. I doubt this would have been the case if he had denied the European Holocaust. Similarity, the press provides no reminders of the plight of the Chinese at the hands of Britain and the Western powers (plus Japan) during the time period from the Opium Wars to the Boxer rebellion. Clearly both these events were as great if not greater an example of human tragedy (in terms of loss of life). This can be said of a great number of imperialist events that occurred in the last century or so.

If remembrance of the Holocaust for the purposes of honoring victims and preventing future coinsurances is the real reason it remains such an important historical event, why wouldn’t these other events maintain a similar presence in cultural consciousness? Why wouldn’t politicians and other public figures be held equally accountable for for imperialist denial? The answer, of course, is that we can justify imperialism with the Holocaust and its surrounding mythology and cannot do so by remembering the Boxer rebellion. Respect for life and human rights, though, has little to do with it. As it is clear that many of those who perpetuate the Holocaust story do so with deceitful motives for political reasons, it follows that there misleading emphasis on Jews is intentional.

The Usefulness of the Holocaust Myth

At present the Holocaust is being used extensively as part of an unjustified propaganda campaign against Iran, and traditional leftist opposed to imperialism (who themselves were victims of the Holocaust). It is being used to make Ahmadinejad, who has said that fully inclusive elections are the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that violence is no longer an acceptable way for countries to solve problems, look like a genocidal maniac. Perhaps worst of all, it is being used to garner support for an imperialist system that is racist in nature and classically imperialist in both execution and form.

The “Holocaust Myth” (as explained above) is of central importance to this propaganda in multiple ways. Firstly, by portraying the Jews as a the primary victims of Hitler’s madness, antisemitism is equated to National Socialism, and unlike other forms of racism and prejudice, its logical conclusion is always considered violent and genocidal as a result of the Holocaust imagery it evokes.

While antisemitism is clearly unacceptable and I by no means mean to offer it any defense, it must be noted that it is viewed considerably more harshly than prejudice against Hispanics, Arabs and homosexuals by the American public, for example. It is accepted that a person can have an unacceptable and unfounded dislike for Blacks, and yet not be an advocate of a return to slavery or segregation, but with regards to antisemitism the image of the Holocaust is always present and antisemites are viewed as NAZIs who favor the “Final Solution” without regard to there individual beliefs.

In this line, the Zionist movement, with the offensive and spurious idea of “New Antisemitism” portrays and discredits traditional leftists and communists (who as mentioned above were Holocaust victims themselves) as antisemites. Never mind the fact that antisemitism really isn’t a viable explanation for the terrorist attacks of the Japanese Red Faction on Israel or General Vo Nguyen Giap’s call for the destruction of Israel in Big Victory Great Task, a 1968 book distributed to North Vietnamese troops. After all, I really don’t think the Vietnamese or the Japanese have any culturally ingrained dislike of Jews, nor any real idea of what a Jew is for that matter. It’s more plausible to accept the claims of the aforementioned, that they objected to Israel as an imperialist state.

Secondly, the notion that Jews were the primary target and victim of the Holocaust allows for the fear of another Holocaust to be better used by Zionists to secure support for Israel. The fear of “New Antisemitism” is being propagated and exploited for the purpose of arguing that a second Holocaust directed against the Jewish people is possible and likely in the West, that only in Israel will they be safe, and that Israel is therefore necessary. Ironically, Zionists simultaneously argue that the Jews of Israel are in danger of genocide at the hands of increasingly sovereign and powerful forces within the Middle East (especially Iran). As such, it is argued that Israel must be supported economically, diplomatically, and militarily to the fullest extent possible in order that this new Holocaust be prevented. To this end, attempts are being made to justify belligerent military and economic actions against Iran.

It could be argued that even if disproportionate ownership of Holocaust victimhood was not afforded to the Jewish people the death of six million Jews still allows for Zionists to make the above arguments. This maybe true in many senses, but I can’t help but think that the connotations and mythology surrounding the Holocaust as a historical event increase it potency as a powerful propaganda tool by the Zionist, the effectiveness of which would be weakened by a more fair and inclusive appraisal of the Holocaust. If the Holocaust invoked the image of dying Soviets and Poles I think that Israel would be served less by exploiting it. More than anything, though, I think that it is important that all victims of the Holocaust be remembered, something that clearly is not happening. Considering the willingness of CNN and so many other to forget so many victims, it seems obvious that Holocaust denial isn’t really whats got all of these people so upset.